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SOME OBSERVATIONS 


ON THE 


ETHNOGRAPHY AND ARCHEOLOGY 


OF THE 


AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 


BY 


f 


SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M. D., 

o 

Author of the Crania Americana, Crania ASgyptiaca, &c. 


EXTRACTED FROM THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, VOL. II, SECOND SERIES. 
• ___ 


NEW HAVEN: 

PRINTED BY B. L. HAMLEN, 
Printer to Yale College, 


1846 . 























































- 








































































































































































































































































































































4 






































































SOME OBSERVATIONS 


ON THE 


ETHNOGRAPHY AND ARCHEOLOGY 


OF THE 


AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 


Nothing in the progress of human knowledge is more remark¬ 
able than the recent discoveries in American archaeology, whether 
we regard them as monuments of art or as contributions to science. 
The names of Stephens and Norman will ever stand preeminent 
for their extraordinary revelations in Mexico and Yucatan; which, 
added to those previously made by Del Rio, Humboldt, Waldeck 
and D’Orbigny in these and other parts of our continent, have 
thrown a bright, yet almost bewildering light, on the former con¬ 
dition of the western world. 

Cities have been explored, replete with columns, bas-reliefs, 
tombs and temples ; the works of a comparatively civilized people, 
who were surrounded by barbarous yet affiliated tribes. Of the 
builders we know little besides what we gather from their monu¬ 
ments, which remain to astonish the mind and stimulate research. 
They teach us the value of archseological facts in tracing the 
primitive condition and cognate relations of the several great 
branches of the human family j at the same time that they prove 
to us, with respect to the American race at least, that we have as 
yet only entered upon the threshold of investigation. 

1 





4 On lice Ethnography and Archaeology 

In fact, ethnography, and archaeology should go hand in hand; 
and the principal object I have in view in giving publicity to the 
following too desultory remarks, is to impress on travellers and 
others who are favorably situated for making observations, the 
importance of preserving every relic, organic or artificial, that can 
throw any light on the past and present condition of our native 
tribes. Objects of this nature have been too often thrown aside 
as valueless; or kept as mere curiosities, until they were finally lost 
or become so defaced or broken as to be useless. To render such 
relics available to science and art, their history and charaeteristics 
should be recorded in the periodicals of the day; by which means 
we shall eventually possess an accumulated mass of facts that will 
be all-important to future generalization. I grant that this course 
has been ably pursued by many intelligent writers, and the Amer¬ 
ican Journal of Science is a fruitful depository of such observa¬ 
tions * With every acknowledgment to these praiseworthy ef¬ 
forts, let us urge then active continuance. Time and the progress 
of civilization are daily effacing the vestiges of our aboriginal 
race; and whatever can be done to rescue these vestiges from ob¬ 
livion, must be done quickly. 

We call attention in the first place, to two skulls from a mound 
about three miles from the mouth of Huron river, Ohio. They 
were obtained by Mr. Charles W. Atwater, and forwarded to Mr. 
B. Silliman, Jr., through whose kindness they have been placed 
in my hands. These remains possess the greater interest, because 
the many articles found with them present no trace of European 
art; thus confirming the opinion expressed in Mr. Atwater’s let¬ 
ter :—“ There are a great many mounds in the township of Hu¬ 
ron,” he observes, “ all which appear to have been built a long 
time previous to the intercourse between the Indians aud the 
white men. I have opened a number of these mounds, and have 
not discovered any articles manufactured by the latter. A piece 
of copper from a small mound is the only metal I have yet 
found.” 

The stone utensils obtained by Mr. Atwater in the present in¬ 
stance, were, as usual, arrow heads, axes, knives for skinning deer, 
sling-stones, and two spheroidal stones on which I shall offer some 


* See more particularly the communications of Mr. R. C. Taylor, in vol. xxxiv, 
of Mr. S. Taylor, in vol. xxxiv, and of Prof. Forshey in vol. xlix. 






5 


of the American Aborigines. 

remarks in another place. The materials of which these articles 
are formed, are jasper, quartz, granite stained by copper, and clay 
slate, all showing that peculiar time-worn polish which such sub¬ 
stances acquire by long inhumation. 

The two skeletons were of a man and a woman. u They 
had been buried on the surface of the ground and the earth raised 
over them. They lay on their backs with their feet to the west.” 
The male cranium presents, in every particular, the characteris¬ 
tics of the American race. The forehead recedes less than usual 
in these people, but the large size of the jaws, the quadrangular 
orbits, and the width between the cheek 
bones, are all remarkably developed; 
while the rounded head, elevated vertex, 
vertical occiput and great inter-parietal 
diameter, (which is no less than 5*7 in¬ 
ches,) render this skull a type of nation¬ 
al conformation. (Fig. 1.) 

The female head possesses the same 
general character, but is more elongated 
in the occipital region, and of more deli¬ 
cate proportions throughout.* 

Similar in general conformation to these are all the mound and 
other skulls I have received since the publication of my work 
on American Crania, viz. five from the country of the Araucos, 
in Chili, from Dr. Thomas S. Page of Valparaiso; six of ancient 
Otomies, Tlascalans and Chechemecans, from Don J. Gomez de 
la Cortina of the city of Mexico; three from near Tampa, in 
Florida, from Dr. R. S. Holmes, U. S. A.; one from a mound 
on Blue river, Illinois, from Dr. Brown of St. Louis; and four 
sent me by Lieut. Meigs, U. S. A., who obtained them from 
the immediate vicinity of Detroit, in Michigan. To these may 
be added two others taken from ancient graves near Fort Chartres, 
in Illinois, by Dr. Wistlizenus of St. Louis; a single cranium 
from the cemetery of Santiago de Tlatelolco, near the city of 
Mexico, which I have received through the kindness of the Baron 
von Gerolt, Prussian minister at Washington; and another very 



* We take this occasion to observe, that skulls taken from the mounds, should at 
once be saturated with a solution of glue or gum, or with any kind of varnish, by 
which precaution further decomposition is effectually prevented. 




6 


On the Ethnography and Archeology 

old skull from the Indian burying grounds at Guamay, in North¬ 
ern Peru, for which I am indebted to Dr. Paul Swift. Last but 
not least, I may add the skull obtained by Mr. Stephens* * * § from a 
vault at Ticul, a ruined aboriginal city of Yucatan, and some 
mutilated but interesting fragments brought me from the latter 
country, by my friend Mr. Norman.f 

These crania, together with upwards of four hundred others of 
nearly sixty tribes and nations, derived from the repositories of 
the dead in different localities over the whole length and breadth 
of both Americas, present a conformable and national type of 
organization, showing the origin of one to be equally the origin 
of all. 

To this prevading cranial type I have already adverted. Even 
the long-headed Aymaras of Peru, whom, in common with Prof. 
Tiedemann, I at first thought to present a congenitally different 
form of head from the nations who surrounded them, are proved, 
by the recent discoveries of M. Alcide D’Orbigny, to have be¬ 
longed to the same race as the other Americans, and to owe their 
singularly elongated crania to a peculiar mode of artificial com¬ 
pression from the earliest infancy.^ 

But there is evidence to the same effect, but of more ancient 
date than any we have yet mentioned. The recent explorations 
of Dr. Lund in the district of Minas Geraes, in Brazil, have brought 
to light human bones which he regards as fossil, because they ac¬ 
company the remains of extinct genera and species of quadrupeds, 
and have undergone the same mineral changes with the latter. 
He has found several crania, all of which correspond in form to 
the present aboriginal type.<§> 

Even the head of the celebrated Guadaloupe skeleton forms 
no exception to the rule. The skeleton itself is well known to 
be in the British Museum, but wants the cranium, which how¬ 
ever is supposed to have been recovered in the one more recently 
found in Guadaloupe by Mr. L’Herminier, and brought by him 


* Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, I, p. 281. 

t Rambles in Yucatan, p. 217. 

+ LTIomme Americain, Tome I, p. 306. I corrected my error before I had the 
pleasure of seeing M. D’Orbigny’s very interesting work. Amer. Jour, of Science, 
vol. xxxviii, No. 2. Jour. Acad. Nat. Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. viii; and 
again in my Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America, p. 6. 

§ See Proceedings of the Acad, of Nat. Sciences of Philadelphia for Dec. 1844. 





7 


of the American Aborigines. 

to Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Moultrie, who has described 
this very interesting relic, makes the following observations:— 
“ Compared with the cranium of a Peruvian presented to Prof. 
Holbrook by Dr. Morton, in the museum of the state of South 
Carolina, the craniological similarity manifested between them is 
too striking to permit us to question their national identity. 
There is in both the same coronal elevation, occipital compres¬ 
sion, and lateral protuberance accompanied with frontal depres¬ 
sion, which mark the American variety in general.”* 

There is additional proof of identity, not only of original con¬ 
formation, but of conventional modification of the form of the head, 
which I may be excused from reverting to in this place, inasmuch 
as the materials I shall use have but recently come to my hands. 
The first of these subjects is represented 
by the subjoined wood-cut, (fig. 2.) It 
was politely sent me by Dr. John Hous- 
toim, an intelligent surgeon of the British 
Navy, with the following memorandum: 

“ From an ancient town called Chiuhiu, 
or Atacama Baja, on the river Loa, and 
on the western edge of the desert of Ata¬ 
cama. The bodies are nearly all buried 
in the sitting posture, [the conventional 
usage of most of the American nations 
from Patagonia to Canada,] with the hands either placed on each 
side of the head, or crossed over the breast. ”f 


Fig. 2. 



* Amer. Jour, of Science, xxxii, p. 364. 

t See Proceedings of the Acad, of Nat. Sciences ofPhila., vol.ii, p.274. If I mis¬ 
take not, I was the first to bring forward this mode of interment practiced by our abo¬ 
riginal nations, as a strong evidence of the unity of the American race. “ Thus it is 
that notwithstanding the diversity of language, customs and intellectual character, 
we trace this usage throughout both Americas, affording, as we have already stated, 
collateral evidence of the affiliation of all the American tribes.”—Crania Ameri¬ 
cana, p. 246, and pi. 69. Mr. Bradford in his valuable work, American Antiquities, 
has added some examples of the same kind; and the Chevalier D’Eichthal has also 
adduced this custom, in connexion with some traces of it in Polynesia, to prove an 
exotic origin for a part at least of the American race. See Mimoires dc la Socttti 
Ethnologique de Paris , Tome II, p. 236. Whence arose this conventional position 
of the body in death ? This question has been often asked and variously answered. 
It is obviously an imitation of the attitude which the living Indian habitually as¬ 
sumes when sitting at perfect ease, and which has been naturally transferred to his 
lifeless remains as a fit emblem of repose. 






8 On the Ethnography and Archaeology 

This cranium (and another received with it) has that remark¬ 
able sugar-loaf form which renders them high and broad m front, 
with a short antero-posterior diameter, both the forehead and oc¬ 
ciput bearing evidence of long continued compression. They 
correspond precisely with the descriptions given by Cieza, Tor- 
quemada and others among the earliest travellers m Peru, who saw 
the natives in various parts of the country with heads rounded 
precisely in this manner.* * * § Fig. 3. 

The second head figured, (fig. 3,) is 
that of a Natchez Indian,f obtained from a 
mound not far from that city by the late 
Mr. James Tooley, Jr., and by him pre¬ 
sented to me. The face in this, as in the 
former instance, has all the characteristics 
of the native Indian; and the cranium 
has undergone precisely the same process 
of artificial compression, although these 
tribes were separated from each other 
by the vast geographical distance of four thousand miles! 

Could we discover the cranial remains of the older Mexican 
nations, we should doubtless find many of them to possess the 
same fanciful type of conformation :% for if either of the skulls 
figured above could be again clothed in flesh and blood, would 
we not have restored to us the very heads that are so abundantly 
sculptured on the monuments of Central America, and so graphi¬ 
cally described by Herrera, when he tells us that the people of 
Yucatan flattened their heads and foreheads ? 

The following diagrams are copied, on an enlarged scale, from 
Mr. Stephens’s Travels,<§> and will serve in further illustration of 
this interesting subject. They are taken from bas-reliefs in the 



* Crania Americana, p. 116. 

t I have been looking to Dr. Dickerson, of Natchez, for more complete details 
derived from the tumuli of that ancient tribe which formed a link between the 
Mexican nations on the one hand, and the savage hordes on the other. Dr. Dicker- 
son is amply provided with interesting and important materials for this inquir}', 
which we trust he will soon make public. 

t The skull brought me from Ticul by Mr. Stephens, is that of a young female. 
It presents the natural rounded form; which accords with the observation of M. 
D’Orbigny, (L’Homme Amerioain,) that the artificial moulding of the head among 
some tribes of Peruvians was chiefly confined to the men. 

§ Travels in Central America, vol. ii, p. 311. 





9 


of the American Aborigines. 


Palace at Palenque. The personage fig. 4, (whose head-dress 
we have partly omitted,) appears to be a king or chieftain, at 
whose feet are two suppliants, naked and cross-legged, of whom 
we copy the one that preserves the most perfect outline, (fig. 5.) 



The principal figure has better features and expression than the 
other, but their heads are formed on the same model; whence 
we may infer that if the suppliant is a servant or a slave of the 
same race with his master, the artificial moulding of the cranium 
was common to all classes. If, on the other hand, we assume 
that he is an enemy imploring mercy, we come to the conclusion 
that the singular custom of which we are speaking, was in use 
among other and surrounding nations; which latter inference is 
confirmed by other evidence, that, for example, derived from the 
Natchez tribe, and the clay effigies so abundantly found at the 
ruined temples of the sun and moon at Teotihuacan, near the 
city of Mexico.* 

I can aver that sixteen years of almost daily comparisons have 
only confirmed me in the conclusions announced in my Crania 
Americana , that all the American nations, excepting the Eskimaux, 
are of one race, and that this race is peculiar and distinct from all 
others. The first of these propositions may be regarded as an 
axiom in ethnography; the second still gives rise to a diversity 
of opinions, of which the most prevalent is that which would 
merge the American race in the Mongolian. 

It has been objected to a common origin for all the American 
nations, and even for those of Mexico, that their monuments 


Crania Americana, p. 146. 









10 On the Ethnography and Archceology 

should present so great a variety in the configuration of the head 
and face; a fact which forcibly impresses every one who ex¬ 
amines the numerous effigies in baked clay in the collection of 
the American Philosophical Society; yet they are all made of 
the same material and by the same national artists. The varieties 
are indeed endless; and Mr. Norman in his first work, has arrived 
at a reasonable conclusion, in which we entirely agree with him, 
“ that the people prepared these penates according to their respec¬ 
tive tastes, and with little reference to any standard or canon.”* 

They appear to have exercised much ingenuity in this way, 
blending almost every conceivable type of the human counte¬ 
nance, and associating this again with those of beasts, birds, and 
various fanciful animals, which last are equal in uncouthness to 
any productions of the Gothic artists of the middle ages. 

Mr. Norman in his late and interesting volume of travels in 
Cuba and Mexico, discovered in the latter country some remark¬ 
able ruins near the town of Panuco, and among them a curious 
sepulchral effigy. u It was a handsome block or slab of stone, 
(wider at one end than the other,) measuring seven feet in length, 
with an average of nearly two and a half feet in width and one 
foot in thickness. Upon its face was beautifully wrought, in bold 
relief, the full length figure of a man, in a loose robe with a girdle 
about his loins, his arms crossed on his breast, his head encased 
in a close cap or casque, resembling the Roman helmet (as repre¬ 
sented in the etchings of Pinelli) without the crest, and his feet 
and ankles bound with the ties of sandals. The figure is that of 
a tall muscular man of the finest proportions. The face, in all its 
features, is of the noblest class of the European or Caucasian 
race.”f 

Mr. Norman was himself struck “ with the resemblance be¬ 
tween this, and the stones that cover the tombs of the Knights 
Templar in some of the ancient churches of the old world,” but 
he thinks that neither this nor any other circumstance proves this 
effigy to have been of European origin or of modern date. “ The 
material,” he adds, “ is the same as that of all the buildings and 
works of art in this vicinity, and the style and workmanship are 
those of the great unknown artists of the western hemisphere;” 


* Rambles in Yucatan, p. 216. 
t Rambles by Land and Water, p. 145. 





11 


of the American Aborigines. 

and he arrives at the conclusion, as many ingenuous minds have 
done before him, that these and the other archaeological remains 
of Mexico and Yucatan, “are the works of a people who have 
long since passed away ; and not of the races, or the progenitors 
of the races , who inhabited the country at the epoch of the dis¬ 
covery.”* 

With the highest respect for this intelligent traveller, I am not 
able to agree with him in his conclusion; but I should not now 
revive my published opinions or contest his, were it not that some 
new light appears to me to have dawned on this very question. 

In the first place, then, we regard the effigy found near Panuco 
as probably Caucasian j so does Mr. Norman; but instead of re¬ 
ferring it to a very remote antiquity, or to some European oc¬ 
cupancy of Mexico long before the Spanish conquest, we will 
venture to suggest, that even if the town of Panuco was itself 
older than that event, (of which indeed we have no doubt,) it is 
consistent with collateral facts to infer, that the Spaniards may 
have occupied this very town, in common with, or subsequent to, 
the native inhabitants, and have left this sepulchral monument. 
That the Spaniards did sometimes practice this joint occupancy, 
is well known; and that they have, in some instances, left their 
monuments in places wherein even tradition had almost lost sight 
of their former sojourn, is susceptible of proof. 

Mr. Gregg, in a recent and instructive work on the “Com¬ 
merce of the Prairies,” states the following particulars, which are 
the more valuable since he had no opinions of his own in refer¬ 
ence to the American aborigines, and merely gives the facts as 
he found them. 

Mr. Gregg describes the ruins called La Gran Quivira , about 
100 miles south of Santa Fe, as larger than the present capital of 
New Mexico. The architecture of this deserted city is of hewn 
stone, and there are the remains of aqueducts eight or ten miles 
in length leading from the neighboring mountains. These ruins 
“have been supposed to be the remains of a pueblo or aboriginal 
city;” but he adds that the occurrence of the Spanish coat of 
arms in more than one instance sculptured and painted upon the 
houses, prevents the adoption of such an opinion; and that tra¬ 
ditional report (and tradition only) mentions this as a city that 


Rambles by Land and Water, p. 203. 

2 






n 


On the Ethnography and ArcJurology 


was sacked and desolated in the Indian insurrection of 1680.* * 
Now had it not been for the occurrence of the heraldic paintings, 
this city might have been still regarded as of purely Indian origin 
and occupancy; as might also the analogous ruins of Abo, Tagi- 
que and Chilili in the same vicinity; for although these may have 
been originally constructed by the natives, yet as they are sup¬ 
posed to be near the ancient mines, it is not improbable that the 
conquerors in these, as in many other instances, drove out the 
rightful owners, and took possession for themselves ;j* for that 
they did possess and inhabit the towns above enumerated is a fact 
beyond question. 

Why may not events of an analogous character have taken 
place at Panuco ? Was it not probably an Indian city into which 
the Spaniards had intruded themselves, and having left traces of 
their sojourn, as at La Gran Quivira , subsequently, owing to 
some dire catastrophe, or some new impulse, abandonded it for 
another and preferable location ? This, we suggest, is a reason¬ 
able explanation of the presence of the Caucasian effigy found 
by Mr. Norman among the deserted ruins of Panuco. 

Mr. Stephens has, I think, conclusively proved that the past 
and present Indian races of Mexico were cognate tribes. I had 
previously arrived at the same conclusion from a different kind 
of evidence. What was manifest in the physical man is corrobo¬ 
rated by his archasological remains. The reiterated testimony 
of some of the early Spanish travellers, and especially of Bernal 
Diaz and Herrera, is of the utmost importance to this question; 
and all that is necessary in the chain of evidence, is some link to 
connect the demi-civilized nations with the present uncultivated 
and barbarous tribes. These links have been supplied by Mr. 
Gregg. Those peculiar dwellings and other structures, with in¬ 
clined or parapet walls,{ and with or without windows, which 
are common to all epochs of Peruvian and Mexican architecture, 
are constructed and occupied by the Indians of Mexico even at 
the present day. After describing the general character of these 


* Commerce of the Prairies, I, p. 165. 
t Ibid. 1,270. 

* 1 am aware that tho walls of ancient Mexican and Peruvian edifices are 
often vertical; but where this is the case the pyramidal form is attained by piling, 
one on the other, successive tiers of masonry, each receding from the other and 
leaving a parapet or platform at its base. 




13 


of the American Aborigines. 

modem domicils, Mr. Gregg goes on to observe, that u a very 
curious feature in these buildings, is that there is most generally 
no direct communication between the street and the lower rooms, 
into which they descended from a trap-door from the upper story, 
the latter being accessible by means of a ladder. Even the en¬ 
trance at the upper stories is frequently at the roof. This style 
of building appears to have been adopted for security against 
their marauding neighbors of the wilder tribes, with whom they 
were often at war. 

“ Though this was their most usual style of architecture, there 
still exists a Pueblo of Taos, composed, for the most part, of but 
two edifices of very singular structure—one on each side of a 
creek, and formerly communicating by a bridge. The base story 
is a mass of near four hundred feet long, a hundred and fifty 
wide, and divided into numerous apartments, upon which other 
tiers of rooms are built, one above another, drawn in by regular 
grades, forming a pyramidal pile of fifty or sixty feet high, and 
comprising some six or eight stories. The outer rooms only seem 
to be used for dwellings, and are lighted by little windows at the 
sides, but are entered through trap-doors in the azoteas or roofs. 
Most of the inner apartments are employed as granaries and store¬ 
rooms, but a spacious hall in the centre of the mass, known as 
the estufa , is reserved for their secret councils. These two build¬ 
ings afford habitation, as is said, for over six hundred souls. 
There is likewise an edifice in the Pueblo of Picuris of the same 
class, and some of those of Moqui are also said to be similar.”* 

The Indian city of Santo Domingo, which has an exclusive 
aboriginal population, is built in the same manner, the material 
being, as usual, sun-burnt bricks ; and my friend Dr. Wm. Gam- 
bel informs me, that in a late journey from Santa Fe across the 
continent to California, he constantly observed an analogous style 
of building, as well in the dwellings of the present native in¬ 
habitants, as in those older and abandoned structures of whose 
date little or nothing is known. 

Who does not see in the builders of these humbler dwellings, 
the descendants of the architects of Palenque, and Yucatan? 
The style is the same in both. The same objects have been ar¬ 
rived at by similar modes of construction. The older structures 


Commerce of the Prairies, I, p. 277. 







14 On the Ethnography and Archceology 

are formed of a better material, generally of hewn stone, and 
often elaborately ornamented with sculpture. But the absence of 
all decoration in the modern buildings, is no proof that they have 
not been erected by people of the same race with those who have 
left such profusely ornamented monuments in other parts of 
Mexico; for the ruins of Pueblo Bonito, in the direction of Na¬ 
vajo, and those of the celebrated Casas Grandes on the western 
Colorado, which were regarded by Clavigero as among the oldest 
Toltecan remains in Mexico, are destitute of sculpture or other 
decoration. In fact, these last named ruins appear to date with 
the primitive wanderings of the cultivated tribes, before they 
established their seats in Yucatan and Guatimala, and erected 
those more finished monuments which could only result from the 
combined efforts of populous communities, acting under the favor¬ 
able influence of peace and prosperity. Every race has had its 
center or centers of comparative civilization. The American 
aborigines had theirs in Peru, Bogota and Mexico. The people, 
the institutions and the architecture were essentially the same in 
each, though modified by local wants and conventional usages. 
Humboldt was forcibly impressed by this archasological identity, 
for he himself had traced it, with occasional interruptions, over 
an extent of a thousand leagues; and we now find that it gradu¬ 
ally merges itself into the ruder dwellings of the more barbarous 
tribes; showing, as I have often remarked, that there is, in every 
respect, a gradual ethnographic transition from these into the 
temple-builders of every American epoch.* 

I shall close this communication by a notice of certain discoidal 
stones occasionally found in the mounds of the United States. 
Of these relics I possess sixteen, of which all but two were found 
by my friend Dr. Wm. Blanding, during his long residence in 
Camden, South Carolina. These disks were accompanied, as 
usual, by earthern vessels, pipes of baked clay, arrow-heads and 
other articles, respecting which Dr. Blanding has given me the 
following locality :— u All the Indian relics, save three or four, 
which I have sent you, were collected on or near the banks of 
the Wateree river, Kershaw district, South Carolina; the greater 
part from the mounds or near the foot of them. All the mounds 


* See my Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of 
America, 2d edit., Philad. 1844. 






15 


of the American Aborigines. 

that I have observed in this state, excepting these, do not amount 
to as many as are found on the Wateree within the distance of 
twenty four miles up and down the river, between Lancaster and 
Sumpter districts. The lowest down is called Nixon’s mound, 
the highest up, Harrison’s.” 

“ The discoidal stones,” adds Dr. Blanding, “ were found at 
the foot of the different mounds, not in them. They seemed to 
be left, where they were no doubt used, on the play grounds.” 

The disks are from an inch and a half to six inches in diam¬ 
eter, and present some varieties in other respects. 



Fig. 1 represents a profile of the simplest form and at the 
same time the smallest size of these stones, being in diameter 
about an inch and three quarters. The upper and under surfaces 
are nearly plane, with angular edges and oblique margin, but with¬ 
out concavity or perforation. 

Fig. 2. A similar form, slightly concave on each surface. 

Fig. 3. A large disk of white quartz, measuring five inches in 
diameter and an inch and three fourths in thickness. The mar¬ 
gin is rounded, and both surfaces are deeply concave though im¬ 
perforate. 

Fig. 4 is another specimen four inches in diameter, deeply con¬ 
cave from the margin to the center, with a central perforation. 
The margin itself is slightly convex. The concave surface is 
marked by two sets of superficial grooved lines, which meet some¬ 
thing in the form of a bird-track. This disk is made of a light- 
brown ferruginous quartz. 

Fig. 5 is a profile view of a solid lenticular stone, much more 
convex on the one side than the other, formed of hard syenitic 
rock. 













16 


On the Ethnography and Archceology 

Besides these there are other slight modifications of form which 
it is unnecessary to particularize. 

These disks are made of the hardest stones, and wrought with 
admirable symmetry and polish, surpassing any thing we could 
readily conceive of in the humbler arts of the present Indian 
tribes; and the question arises, whether they are not the works of 
their seemingly extinct progenitors ?—of that people of the same 
race, (but more directly allied to the Toltecans of Mexico,) who 
appear in former times to have constituted populous and cultivated 
communities throughout the valley of the Mississippi, and in the 
southern and western regions towards the gulf of Mexico, and 
whose last direct and lineal representatives were the ill-fated 
Natchez ? 

I have made much inquiry as to the localities of these and 
analogous remains, but hitherto with little success. I am assured 
that they have been found in Missouri, perhaps near St. Louis; 
and in very rare instances in the northern part of Delaware. Dr. 
Ruggles has sent me the plaster model of a small, perforated, but 
irregularly formed stone of this kind, taken from an ancient In¬ 
dian grave at Fall River in Rhode Island; but Dr. Edwin H. 
Davis, of Chilicothe, in a letter recently received from him, in¬ 
forms me that he had obtained, during his excavations in that 
vicinity, no less than 11 two hundred flint disks in a single mound, 
measuring from three and a half to five inches in diameter, and 
from half an inch to an inch in thickness, of three different forms, 
round, oval and triangular.” These appear, however, to be of a 
different construction and designed for some other use than those 
I have described; and Dr. Davis himself offers the probable sug¬ 
gestion, that u they were rude darts blocked out at the quarries 
for easy transportation to the Indian towns.” The same gentle¬ 
man speaks of having found other disks formed of a micaceous 
slate, of a dark color and highly polished. These last appear to 
correspond more nearly to those we have indicated in the above 
diagrams. 

Besides these disks, I have met with a few spheroidal stones, 
about three inches in diameter. One of these accompanies the 
disks from South Carolina, and is marked with a groove to re¬ 
ceive the thumb in throwing it. A similar but ruder ball is con¬ 
tained among the articles found by Mr. Atwater in the mound near 
Huron, Ohio. 


IT 


of the American Aborigines. 

What was the use of the disks in question ? Those who have 
examined the series in my possession have offered various expla¬ 
nations ; but the only one that seems in any degree plausible, is 
that of my friend Dr. Blanding, who supposes them to have been 
used in a game analogous to that of the quoits of the Europeans. 
It is a curious fact that discoidal stones much resembling these 
have been found in Scandinavia ;* whence I was at first led to 
suppose it possible, especially in consideration of their apparently 
circumscribed occurrence in this country, that they might have 
been introduced here by the Northmen; a conjecture that seems 
to lose all foundation since these relics have been found as far 
west as the Mississippi. 

Note .—Since the preceding remarks were written, I have re¬ 
ceived from my friend, Mr. William A. Foster, of Lima, ten 
skulls and two entire mummied bodies from the Peruvian ceme¬ 
tery at Arica. “ This cemetery,” observes Mr. Foster, “ lies on the 
face of a sandhill sloping towards the sea. The external surface 
occupied by these tombs, as far as we explored, I should say was 
five or six acres. In many of the tombs three or four bodies 
were found clustered together, always in the sitting posture , and 
wrapped in three or four thicknesses of cloth, with a mat thrown 
over all.” 

These crania possess an unusual interest, inasmuch as, with 
two exceptions, they present the horizontally elongated form, in 
every degree from its incipient stage to its perfect development. 

By what contrivance has the rounded head of the Indian been 
moulded into this fantastic shape? I have elsewheref offered 
some explanations of this subject; but the present series of skulls 
throws yet more light on it, and enables me to indicate the pre¬ 
cise manner in which this singular object has been attained. 

It is evident that the forehead was pressed downwards and 
backwards by two compresses, (probably a folded cloth,) one 
on each side of the frontal suture, which was left free; a fact 
that explains the cause of the ridge, which, in every instance, 


* See Journal of the Antiquarian Society of Denmark, published in Copenhagen 
in the Danish language, vol. i, tab. 2, figs. 52,53. 
t Jour. Acad. Nat. Sciences of Philad., vol. viii. 





18 


On the Ethnography and Archaeology 


replaces that suture by extending from the root of the nose to the 
coronal suture. To keep these compresses in place, a bandage 
was carried over them from the base of the occiput obliquely for¬ 
wards ; and then, in order to confine the lateral portions of the 
skull, the same bandage was continued by another turn over the 
top of the head, immediately behind the coronal suture, and prob¬ 
ably with an intervening compress; and the bandaging was re¬ 
peated over these parts until they were immovably confined in 
the desired position. 

Every one who is acquainted with the pliable condition of the 
cranial bones at birth, will readily conceive how effectually this ap¬ 
paratus would mould the head in the elongated or cylindrical form j 
for, while it prevents the forehead from rising, and the sides of the 
head from expanding, it allows the occipital region an entire free¬ 
dom of growth; and thus without sensibly diminishing the vol¬ 
ume of the brain, merely forces it into a new though unnatural 
direction, while it preserves, at the same time, a remarkable sym¬ 
metry of the whole structure. 

The following outline of one 
of these skulls, will further il¬ 
lustrate my meaning ; mere¬ 
ly premising that the course 
of the bandages is in every 
instance distinctly marked 
by a corresponding cavity 
of the bony structure, ex¬ 
cepting on the forehead, where the action of a firm compress 
has left a plane surface. 

This conformation, as we have already observed, was prevalent 
among the old Aymara tribes which inhabited the shores and isl¬ 
ands of the Lake of Titicaca, and whose civilization seems evi¬ 
dently to antedate that of the Inca Peruvians. I was in fact at 
one time led to consider this form of head as peculiar to, and 
characteristic of, the former people; but Mr. Foster’s extensive 
observations conclusively prove that it was as common among 
some tribes of the sea coast, as among those of the mountainous 
region of Bolivia; that it belonged to no particular nation or tribe ; 
and that it was, in every instance, the result of mechanical com¬ 
pression. 








19 


of the American Aborigines. 

In my Crania Americana I Have given abundant instances of a 
remarkable vertical flattening of the occiput, and irregularity of 
its sides, among the Inca Peruvians who were buried in the royal 
cemetery of Pachacamac, near Lima. These heads present no 
other deviation from the natural form ; and even this irregularity 
I have thought might be accounted for by a careless mode of 
binding the infant to the simple board, which, among many In¬ 
dian tribes of both North and South America, is a customary 
substitute for a cradle. It is probable, however, that even this 
configuration was intentional, and may have formed a distinctive 
badge of some particular caste of these singular people, among 
whom a perfectly natural cranium was of extremely rare oc¬ 
currence. 

We are now acquainted with four forms of the head among 
the old Peruvians which were produced by artificial means, viz : 

1. The horizontally elongated, or cylindrical form, above de¬ 
scribed. 

2. The conical or sugar-loaf form, represented in the preced¬ 
ing diagrams. 

3. The simple flattening or depression of the forehead, causing 
the rest of the head to expand, both posteriorly and laterally; a 
practice yet prevalent among the Chenooks and other tribes at 
the north of the Columbia river, in Oregon. 

4. A simple vertical elevation of the occiput, giving the head 
in most instances a squared and inequilateral form. 

A curious decree of the ecclesiastical court of Lima, dated A. D. 
1585, and quoted by the late Prof. Blumenbach, alludes to at least 
four artificial conformations of the head, even then common 
among the Peruvians, and forbids the practice of them under 
certain specified penalities. These forms were called in the lan¬ 
guage of the natives, “Caito, Oma, Opalla, &c.and the contin¬ 
uance of them at that period, affords another instance of the 
tenacity with which the Peruvians clung to the usages of their 
forefathers. 


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